River AI aims to empower users with customizable artificial intelligence

Igor Babuschkin has a track record that reads like a greatest-hits tour of the AI industry. Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Tesla, and most recently xAI, the Elon Musk-backed venture where he served as co-founder. Now he’s betting that the next frontier in artificial intelligence isn’t bigger models or flashier chatbots. It’s giving regular people the ability to reshape AI themselves.

His new company, River AI, was incorporated in Nevada on April 20, 2026, with a straightforward but ambitious thesis: AI should be something users own and modify, not something handed down from a centralized lab.

The pitch: your AI, your rules

River AI’s core concept revolves around personalized AI agents that can be “retrained” by the people who use them. Think of it less like downloading an app and more like adopting a digital assistant that actually learns your preferences, workflows, and priorities over time, because you teach it to.

The company is still in the foundational research phase. As of mid-2026, River AI has no released products and no revenue. What it does have is a founding team stacked with veterans from xAI and Tesla, a founder willing to put $100 million of his own money on the line, and a fundraising target that signals serious intent.

River AI is reportedly seeking up to $1 billion in outside funding, with a valuation target of roughly $5 billion. General Catalyst is said to be in discussions to lead the round.

The “neolab” phenomenon

River AI belongs to a category that some industry observers have started calling “neolabs,” startups that raise enormous sums to pursue long-horizon AI research before they have anything close to a commercial product.

Babuschkin departed xAI in August 2025, launched an entity called Babuschkin Ventures, and within months had assembled a team and a corporate structure for River AI.

River AI’s longer-term roadmap reportedly includes a potential API layer and dedicated hardware, which would position the company not just as a research outfit but as a platform provider.

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